Loss and Love and Everything in Between
by ThornRose16
Summary: At a young age, Victor and Jimmy take refuge in a rickety old barn. The girl that finds them is a mutant like them, and becomes the love of Victor's life. While off at war, something happens back at the homestead and they become separated. They set off on a journey of loss and love and everything in between. Victor/OFC. Logan/Rogue. *This is rated for use of offensive language.*


_Sometime in the mid 1800's_

Victor and Jimmy held onto one another, both trembling with fear and cold. Jimmy was sick again, his body still weak without the development of the healing factor. They had taken refuge in the drafty, damp hay loft of a barn. The owner of the barn was an old farmer and his family that were already in bed with the sunset, leaving their property open for the two cold and lonely mutants. They had been on the run for several years – Victor was nineteen and Jimmy's sixteenth birthday was coming up soon. Victor wanted to do something, but they were dead broke and nearly starved as it was – there was no way he was going to be able to help the runt celebrate for his birthday. A creaking door alerted Victor to another presence entering their space, along with the sweet scent of lilacs. Victor's teeth bared as he let Jimmy stay resting on the soft hay. The boy's fever was raging as violently as the storm outside of the barn, and Victor would be damned before he had to take him out into that mess. He was crouched with his claws extended and his ears straining for more sound over the howling wind. A head of straw colored hair popped through the hole for the ladder, followed by a pair of pretty blue eyes.

"Are you alright?" a sweet, feminine voice questioned. The blue eyes took in Victor's predator stance wearily, her lips twisting into a bit of a smile. Small fangs peeked out from behind soft lips and pale skin. "You're like me!"

"Huh?" he questioned wearily. "What do you want?"

"I saw you come in through the back, and I thought I'd come make sure you were alright," she explained with a lilting southern accent. It was an odd accent to hear in the middle of Pennsylvania. "I'm Adrianne, but you can call me Anne."

"I, uh, I'm Victor and this is my brother Jimmy," Victor said. He was still weary of the blonde, but he'd seen her fangs so he knew she wasn't lying. "I thought little girls were supposed to be in bed at this hour."

Adrianne shot Victor with a dirty look. "I just turned sixteen a fortnight ago, thank you very much!" she said haughtily, turning her nose up toward the other mutant.

A cough from Jimmy's direction brought them out of their glaring contest. Victor placed his hand on the younger's back, patting gently until the coughing fit passed. Adrianne crept closer, her soaked nightgown dragging the ground loudly. Victor didn't know whether to push her away or run, so he allowed her to move closer. Her petite hand rested carefully on Jimmy's forehead, and the heat there caused her to jerk back.

"He ain't healin' – why not?" Adrianne demanded, looking to Victor for the answer. "You heal, right?"

"His…his hasn't started yet. Mine started a long time ago, and I don't know why his hasn't," Victor said. He felt helpless and scared and that was making him angry.

"How old is he?" she asked, getting up and walking away.

"He'll be sixteen pretty soon," Victor said, knowing she'd hear him even all the way across the hay loft. "What does that got to do with anything?"

"I didn't start healin' till I got scarlet fever last year. He's still got time to start, I think," Adrianne explained. She returned a few moments later with an armful of blankets. "Get him out of those wet clothes and into these."

Adrianne turned her back on the two boys, giving Jimmy privacy while Victor stripped him of the wet and dirty clothes. Victor alerted her when Jimmy was wrapped up in the warm blankets and she helped him prop the boy up properly on the hay.

"Are you hungry?" she asked, looking over the two thin boys with scrutiny.

Victor shrugged his shoulders carefully, too proud to admit that he was. "Jimmy is, though – he hasn't eaten more than scraps in a few days." The older boy stared down at his brother with self-hatred in his eyes. He couldn't take care of his brother and he hated himself for it.

Adrianne's hand found his shoulder gently. "I'll go get y'all some food, okay? Relax – ain't none of this your fault."

The small blonde hopped down from the hay loft, landing gently on her feet and seeming not to notice that she just dropped down about fifteen feet. Quickly, she left the way she came. Victor sat back down next to Jimmy and pulled the younger boy closer to him, trying to transfer body heat. Jimmy was shivering and sweating profusely from the fever and blankets. Victor was suddenly hyper-aware of an extra presence accompanying Adrianne into the barn. An extra set of footsteps echoed around the barn and followed up the ladder. Adrianne's head came up first, followed by a basket filled with food. Another woman followed closely, with blonde hair that matched the younger girl's. She held a large pitcher of water.

"This is my mama – she's like us, but different," Adrianne said, setting the basket of food down near Victor. "Mama, this is Victor and his brother Jimmy. Jimmy is real sick, so we wrapped him up in them blankets to try and sweat his fever out."

"Hello, there Victor. I hope it's okay that Adrianne brought me out here to help," the mother said softly. "You can call me Alice, if you want, or Miss Taylor."

Victor nodded slowly. He leaned Jimmy up against the hay again, and stood up to greet the older woman. "Th-thank you, Miss Alice," he said quietly. He moved aside to Alice could get to Jimmy easier.

He and Adrianne stood next to one another in the dark as Alice began to take Jimmy's temperature with her hand. After a moment, Adrianne scooped the basket off of the ground and walked to another grouping of hay. She patted the seat next to her until Victor came to sit. He kept a close eye on his brother, however, ready to attack at the first sign of foul play. Adrianne thoroughly distracted him when she began pulling all sorts of food out of the basket. She handed him some dried meat and let him scarf that down before handing him a loaf of bread. After that came some fruit and vegetables, some dried and some fresh. A jar of freshly preserved peaches were slurped down by the both of them before Victor was able to make himself stop.

"Wait – what about Jimmy?" he demanded, horrified at himself when he saw the empty basket.

"I've got some soup warming for him inside. I set up the guest room for the two of you to sleep in tonight," Adrianne said. She curled her legs up underneath her and leaned back onto the hay. "Finish the rest of the peaches if you want them."

* * *

Victor woke up to the sound of shouting – it reminded him distinctly of home. The man's voice was overpowering, but the woman didn't seem to be phased until there was a crash in the other room. He could smell the fear coming off of Alice. They'd been staying with Adrianne for most of the winter, and Victor couldn't help but feel protective of Alice and Adrianne. He'd adopted them into his pack, and he didn't like the new man that was courting Alice. He pulled on his trousers and shot out of the room, claws drawn and fangs bared.

"Get your hands off of her!" Victor roared, snarling at the tall but thin man.

John was a distinctly middle class man, with graying hair and a controlling attitude. His back bone went as far as his money went, and that wasn't very far. He shrank away from the nineteen year old wearily, before bolting out the door. Victor did all that he could to hold the animal at bay from chasing after him and tearing the man apart. Alice stared after the man with a mostly blank face; she hadn't really cared about the man, either, and was only courting him out of polite non-interest.

"I feel like that was a little over the top, Victor," she said with a quiet chuckle. "Thank you, though, for getting him away from me."

"Are you okay, Miss Alice?" Victor asked, stepping forward and sniffing the air for any sign of injury.

"I'm fine, really," Alice assured him. She sent him a sweet smile. "Why don't you go and wake up Adrianne and Jimmy for breakfast?"

Victor nodded and walked off toward his and Jimmy's room. They'd sold the larger bed's mattress for two smaller ones and made the room a bit more of their own. Jimmy woke easily and began to dress after Victor shook him gently awake. Jimmy was feeling better. His healing factor had yet to kick in, but he had shaken the illness that plagued him before, leaving the boy to grow and feel much better in his own skin. Victor and Adrianne had been teaching him how to wrestle and spar with his mostly developed bone claws, neither wanting him to get cornered without them one day and beaten up by the people in town. Victor and Adrianne had gotten much closer over the winter, a fact that showed blatantly when the two were around one another. Adrianne would blush bright red whenever Victor would look at her for a second too long or when she would get caught gazing in his direction. He could smell her attraction to him some days, and on others she just seemed normal. Victor didn't really know what to think of it. Alice only smiled when she noticed certain things, choosing to keep quiet. Victor or Adrianne would confess to their feeling one day, and she'd be an audience to the love that would bloom from it. There was no doubt in the mother's mind that Victor would treat her little girl like a princess if he was given the chance to. Victor silently entered Adrianne's room, knowing she'd probably heard him coming. He sat on the edge of the bed and ran his fingers through her straw colored hair as she curled around his waist.

"It's time for breakfast," he said quietly.

"What're we havin'?" she asked, sitting up and snaking her arms around his bare chest.

"Eggs and sausage, I think," he said, his claws scraping across her scalp and down her neck gently. The two hormonal feral mutants could hardly stand to keep their hands off of one another, for proprieties sake, or otherwise. It made Victor grateful that Alice was a telekinetic instead of another feral, lest she figure it out.

Tilting up the girl's chin, Victor's lips molded to hers in a passionate kiss. Adrianne wrapped her arms around his neck and pulled herself over his lap to straddle him. Wrapping his arms tightly around her, Victor ravaged her mouth and trailed kissed down her throat and over her collar bone. He nipped hard at the skin there, leaving it tender with his teeth marks. Claws scraped down his back in a deliciously painful way, healing almost as instantly as they were made. Adrianne ground against him intimately, moaning into the older boy's mouth quietly. Both heard Alice making her slow direction toward the bedroom and jerked apart. Adrianne pulled her nightgown down and settled under the covers while Victor adjusted his trousers and stood to lean over her. He was shaking her "awake" when Alice glided into the room.

"She's such a heavy sleeper," Alice murmured, catching the tender way that Victor looked down at the blonde.

Victor and Adrianne met Jimmy and Alice in the kitchen, all four sitting down to a companionable breakfast of eggs and sausage.

* * *

The trio of feral mutants had been traveling together for several years before the Civil War began. Victor, as vicious as ever, wanted to enlist, as did Jimmy who had his new healing factor. Adrianne, of course, couldn't enlist as a woman, and decided that she'd stay at the newly purchased house and wait for her boys to return home. Easily the friendliest of them all, Adrianne made friends and passed the time until they were to return home. She missed them both, but Victor the most. He'd promised to come home and marry her as soon as the war was over. Adrianne spent most of her time alone in the empty house, hating herself for letting those boys go off to war. Healing factor or not, she worried about them constantly, and only wanted them to come home. Four years passed in much the same way – slowly and lonely. Letters were lost more than they were received and the violence was getting worse and worse.

"Adrianne, are you okay?" asked a sweet voice from her side.

"I'm fine, Lydia," Adrianne said quietly, her eyes glued to the stitching in her hand. "Why don't we go put on some tea, hm?"

Adrianne brushed off the younger girl's concerns as best as she could, choosing to cry at night where no one could see or hear her. She was far too prideful to seek out anyone's comfort while her Victor was away. She sat in the middle of their bed with one of his shirts held to her nose, crying harder every time she couldn't smell him anymore. The time away was becoming unbearable and she didn't know what to do with herself anymore. The other women were asking her why she was waiting on a man that wasn't her husband. Other men were trying to court her, but she'd never betray her Victor that way. They all just didn't understand – except Lydia. Lydia was only twenty-three to Adrianne's twenty-nine, but she too was waiting for her lover to return. Lydia and her newborn had moved into the guest wing of Adrianne's home the season that Victor and Jimmy had gone off to war when Lydia was only nineteen. She and her man had not had time to be married before he was drafted, and the town shunned her when people began to realize that the young woman was pregnant. That had been four years before and the toddler was running around to explore, giving Adrianne some bit of happiness as the waiting kept on. It was the middle of the night and there was a harsh banging on the door. Lydia ran as fast as she could into Adrianne's room, Teddy wrapped up in her arms.

"Adrianne, someone is at the door," Lydia said, the smell of her fear permeating the room. Any person banging on the door in the middle of the night couldn't be there for good reasons.

"I know, I heard," Adrianne grumbled, her face buried in the pillow. She sat up and straightened out her nightgown. "Stay upstairs 'till I tell you it's safe."

Adrianne twisted up her long, straw colored hair and made her way to the front door. The banging was grating on her sensitive hearing and she was ready to tear out someone's eyes for waking her out of her restful sleep. She jerked the door open quickly and glared at the man standing on the other side.

"What do you want?" she demanded of the man.

"The war is over, ma'am! The Union has won!" His excited smile faded when Adrianne's angry face didn't change. "What…what's the problem, ma'am?"

"I'm a Confederate supporter – get the fuck off of my property," Adrianne snarled. Her mood was steadily worsening. They hadn't realized when they bought the house that the people with property next to theirs were from farther north.

The man recoiled at the harsh and improper language that spewed from her mouth. "Ma'am, that isn't –"

"I don't think I stuttered! Get out!" she roared. Didn't he realize that this meant Victor, Jimmy, and Nathanial were dead? "And I don't want to see you near here again, or I'll tear off your head!" she shouted after him as he walked quickly across the lawn toward his own house.

Tears tumbled from Adrianne's eyes as she slammed the front door. She sat heavily on the ground, not knowing what to do now that Victor could never come home to her. Wailing sobs escaped her, freezing Lydia in place at the top of the stairs. She'd never seen or heard Adrianne cry in the whole four years they'd lived together. Lydia didn't know what was going on or what to do about it. The younger woman trailed down the stairs after placing Teddy back in the bed. Sitting next to Adrianne, she drew the older woman to cry on her shoulder.

"They ain't comin' home, Lydia – the…the Union won the war," Adrianne grit out between sobs.

"Oh, God," Lydia wailed.

The two women clung to one another, crying all night long. It was late in the morning when Teddy finally woke up and toddled down the stairs. His hair was a happy yellow color that matched the smile on his face. As soon as he saw the two huddled over women, his hair faded to a confused grayish-white color. The four year old made his quiet way over to them and put a hand on each of their heads.

"Mommy? Auntie Addie?" Teddy questioned quietly.

"Hey, Teddy," Lydia sniffed, whipping at her eyes. "Are you hungry this mornin'?"

Teddy nodded and wiggled to where he was sitting in the middle of both women. "You don't have to make nothin' – I do it," he said, not wanting to make them cry anymore.

"It's okay, baby; I'll make you breakfast," Lydia assured him. "Are you goin' to be alright for a moment, Adrianne?"

Adrianne's sobs had yet to subside or slow. She was gagging from the intensity of it, the pain of not knowing if Victor and Jimmy had died slowly or quickly – whether or not they were killed in action or the infection raged in their bodies without knowing – if he was thinking about her when he died or if he died with the agonizing pain tearing through his mind. The pain of it was growing to be too much for Adrianne's unstable mind. The animal paced in the back of her mind, hissing horrible things into her brain.

"Get away from me," Adrianne whimpered, pulling at her hair to keep her hands occupied. She rocked back and forth slightly, thumping her head against the wood to remind herself of where she was. "I don't want to hurt you – please, get away."

Lydia scooped Teddy into her arms and scurried away to the kitchen, trying not to be afraid of the woman in the entryway. A few minutes later, Lydia stuck her head around the hall, only to see the front door swinging wide open and Adrianne gone.

* * *

Victor sat backwards in the saddle of his horse. He was at the front of the small line that he, Jimmy, and Nathaniel were making on their trek home. The war might've been lost, but the battle they'd finished it with was bloody and amazing in Victor's opinion. He was still coming down from the high of it as they rode home. Though he was happy about the way the war went for the three of them, he was more than ready to get back to his loving woman.

"How much longer is this gonna take?" Nathaniel huffed, his gruff demeanor only worsened by his time away from his Lydia.

"Yeah, Victor – let's speed it up a bit. I'm ready to sleep in my bed," Jimmy growled. He wanted a bath and a meal that Adrianne cooked. After that, he'd sleep for a week at least.

Victor scoffed. "Whatever – let's go," he said. Spinning around, he sent his horse off on a gallop toward home.

They'd been traveling for four days – that was how long it had been since Adrianne had taken off into the forest surrounding the two houses. Lydia had kept herself and Teddy inside for the four days. She'd heard the screams of the neighbor's wife from their front yard, but couldn't bring herself to look. The young woman had known Adrianne and the brothers were dangerous mutants, but she'd never really had to witness it. The only person she'd known as a victim was a man trying to force himself on her when she'd gone to the market. Jimmy had stepped in and eviscerated the man before he could harm her. That was the reason she'd met them in the first place. Lydia watched from the top window of the house, wondering if she'd ever be able to leave. Movement toward the edge of the front field caught her eye, and she watched as three horses galloped toward the house at full speed. All inhibitions left her as she recognized Nathaniel as one of the riders. She tore down the stairs at lightning speed and burst through the front door.

"Nathaniel!" Lydia shrieked in excitement. He leap t from the horse and swept her into his arms from the front porch.

Victor jumped from his horse next, looking around with thinly veiled excitement. When Adrianne didn't appear, he looked around carefully. He scented the air, only to find that her scent was old around the house. He whipped around towed Lydia, claws extended and ready to tear anything and everything apart.

"Where is Adrianne?" he demanded.

"Sh-she took off four days ago. W-we thought all of you w-w-were d-dead. I'm so sorry, Victor. She k-k-killed the p-people in the other house," Lydia said, still bawling from happiness and fear.

Victor sped off on all fours toward the forest, knowing exactly where his woman would've gone. Upon reaching the river, her scent disappeared, as if she'd gained wings and just flown away. He saw a shred of her tattered nightgown hanging from a tree limb above the water. That was the only sign of her for miles and miles around. Victor searched for weeks upon weeks; each day, the animal in the back of his mind would pace and rumble vicious things. _She never loved you. She ran away with another man as soon as you were gone. No one could ever care for a demon like you._ It only took a few days of despair until the monster had taken over.

* * *

Okay, so if anyone hasn't realized, I have a bit of a problem with regular updates, sticking to a story line, and finishing stories in general. This is a new one (obviously) and this prologue is just a...pilot, if you will, to see if anyone is even interested in me continuing this. I will warn, though, that I would almost a full time job and I go to school every day, so that doesn't leave too much room for pleasure writing. I will do my best to update as regularly as possible, though, so no one loses interest. If anyone is even interested. I guess we shall see. I'd like to see some reviews, but I'm not going to be some kind of awkward review Nazi. It'd be nice to have a bit of feedback every once in a while, for sure, but I'm not going to obsess over it. Thanks, y'all!


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